Photo owned by bobster1985 (cc)
You can’t make this up. Utterly sickening. Woman complains her son isn’t getting speech therapy and HSE responds in a nasty email telling her how much the kid has cost the state so far as if that was justification. Everyone has a price on their head with HSE managers like that. The blog post was written in August but it’s worth highlighting still.
I found a missive so full of spite and veiled threats, that I was left reeling for days. Even now as I type, I can feel my heart rate increase. A local manager, who is charged with overseeing services of the caring profession to the weakest and most vulnerable in our community, saw fit to write in response to us having the temerity to contact Our Lord The Most High Brendan Drum. She reminded us of how she was well aware of our son, and proceeded to detail exactly how much our son had cost her over the years we spent on jolly jaunts to Dublin 3 days a week for dialysis. We were given the breakdown of nursing care, the enormous cost, and most importantly, lest we forget, the fact that all of this was in the form of a ‘grant’. Yes readers, a grant, not a right to travel to Dublin for life saving treatment, folks this was a grant, that was within her gift to bestow or take away. We had displeased this all powerful manager by going to her boss with an insolent inquiry about a minor issue like Speech Therapy.
The whole blog is about her son and husband, her husband donated a kidney to her son. Well worth a read. Found via a comment on Red Mum’s blog.
That’s the crowning achievement of Mary Harney. The HSE now exists only to keep managers and accountants in a job. Patients are viewed as parasites on the resources of the health service.
Cnuts, the lot of them. What ever happened to quality being about the customer?
My experience of one (private) facility recently was that they viewed the plaque on the wall trumpeting their quality certification more highly than actually doing the quality thing. Ended up switching to a different clinic to continue the (expensive) treatment as trust evaporated very quickly. As a quality management professional I was appalled at the “we’ve got our plaque so it can’t be our fault” attitude I encountered… appalled, but sadly not surprised.
I do hope that the original poster publishes at least some extracts from the original email to evidence the ignorance.
That is one of the most appalling things I have heard, I think my reaction to getting something like that would be simple ‘SO’.
Dreadful.
Got similar treatment from manager looking after the housing disability grants for Fingal Co Co. After waiting three months for an update on our grant application and constantly being told “the computer system is down”, “cannot find your file”, “X working on your case not available” and then promising to ring me back and never doing so, I then had the cheek to make a complaint. Within 4 hours of complaint being lodged the manager was onto me telling me I had not followed the correct application procedures and spoke to me like I was a misbehaving 4 year old. Then to top it all threatened to deny the grant. All becuase I complained about the lack of customer service from her department.
Another time when looking for home help we were told that in order for us to get home help we would have to take that service from someone else and did we want that on our concious? My reply “I don’t care about other people’s problems I want services for my son – it is your job to manage your own resources not mine”.
Having a sick/disabled child is touch enough on you emotionally without having to constantly fight the bureacrats in this country for everything you need.
Absolutely Disgraceful.
A complaint to the ombundsman should be made about this. I did and eventually it got results.
Problem is people are so exhausted fighting for basis entitlements, they don’t have the time or energy to follow through.
Attended Health Board professional with a very disturbed. Treatment offered. Constantly told if this does’nt work we will put him into residential care. Caused so much extra stress that I eventually gave up work to take care of him full time. At the end of it all when the child had made a decent recovery and did my final consultation I could see they could be bothered and just said that you for taking the time to make the last visit. Most people don’t. There I was with no job and no prospects of a job after all the scare mongering tactics and now I can go live or die and who cares?